Are you related to me? Is it old news that we share an ancestor, whether that be a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent or further back? If so, this post is for you.
I am looking for cousins and aunts (since all my uncles are deceased) that would be willing to take a DNA test to help us track down our family lines. No matter if you're on my mother's or my father's side of the family, no matter if you are an aunt, first, second or third cousin, getting a DNA test done will really help!
I'm sure some of you are asking "How could a DNA test possibly help us find our family? You already had a test done and that didn't help. Why would it help if I had one done?"
The answer to that question is cross-matching. I have an enormously long list of people I match on my autosomal DNA test results. Of these hundreds of matches, I know how I'm related to exactly two of them. To make matters worse, these known relations and I don't share any other common matches! This means that I have absolutely no idea how any of the other hundreds of matches are related to me. No matter how much genealogical work has been done on their family, absolutely none of it does us any good because we have no clue where on our family lines we could be related.
On the other hand, if I had a fourth cousin who was descended from Tom and Kitty Doran who got their autosomal DNA test done, we can look at the other matches we share and potentially narrow down where in Ireland the Doran family is from.
If I had a third cousin who was descended from Hugh Kelly and Catherine Murphy, I could compare our common matches and potentially tell us where the the Kelly is from or confirm where we believe the Murphy family is from.
The possibilities are endless. Seeing that I match one other person helps a bit, but to really gain insight from DNA tests, I believe having two or more people tested and comparing common matches is needed. This is where the real research power comes in.
Are you willing to take a Family Tree DNA autosomal test? If so, please do and let me know. If you're willing to have it done but don't have the finances to spare, let me know that also. I have decided that I will be willing to have a couple of these tests done for a couple of cousins. Please post below or email me to let me know and why you believe it would be a good idea to have you tested. Depending on how many responses I get, I'll either get you tested or decide which of the people who responded would be best to test in order help us track down our family tree and get them tested.
I'm ready to roll on this. Please let me know as soon as you can!
--Matt
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